The Book Plank

You Die When You Die by Angus Watson, West of West #1 YOU DIE WHEN YOU DIE . . . You can't change your fate - so throw yourself into battle, because you'll either win or wake up drinking mead in the halls of your ancestors. That's what Finn's tribe believe. But when their settlement is massacred by a hostile tribe and Finn and several friends, companions and rivals make their escape across a brutal, unfamiliar landscape, Finn will fight harder than he's ever fought in his life. He wants to live - even if he only lives long enough to tell Thyri Treelegs how he feels about her. The David Gemmell Award nominated author of Age of Iron returns with You Die When You Die - in which a mismatched group of refugees battle animals and monsters, determined assassins, depraved tribes, an unforgiving land and each other as they cross a continent to fulfil a prophecy. Angus Watson surprised us all a few years ago with his Iron Age series. This time he is r...

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames, The Band #1  Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.  It's time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld. Clay Cooper and his band were once the best of the best -- the meanest, dirtiest, most feared crew of mercenaries this side of the Heartwyld.  Where to begin? Every reader has a sweet spot for a certain style/genre of book. For me it has always been Epic Fantasy. I have been a bit out of the social media scene so i hadn't heard anything about the announcement of Kings of the Wyld right until it dropped in my mailbox. After seeing the cover ...

The Last Sacrifice by James A. Moore, The Tides of War #1 Since time began, the Grakhul – immortal servants of the gods – have taken human sacrifices to keep the world in balance and the gods appeased. When they choose the family of warrior Brogan McTyre, everything changes.  Brogan begins the toughest battle of his life to free his family from their terrible fate. But when you challenge the gods, you challenge the very fabric of society. Declared an outcast, Brogan and his kin are hunted like criminals – but nothing will stand in his way. James A. Moore has come a long way. A few years ago he singed a deal with AR for two books I believe in his new Dark Epic Fantasy series Seven Forges. Just have a look on the internet how many positive reviews this series has gotten. Growing the series from two to four books and several short stories, most of them are featured here on this blog. I didn't know that James A. Moore was working on a new book and new series, so when I got an email...

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington It has been twenty years since the end of the war. The dictatorial Augurs - once thought of almost as gods - were overthrown and wiped out during the conflict, their much-feared powers mysteriously failing them. Those who had ruled under them, men and women with a lesser ability known as the Gift, avoided the Augurs' fate only by submitting themselves to the rebellion's Four Tenets. A representation of these laws is now written into the flesh of any who use the Gift, forcing those so marked into absolute obedience. As a student of the Gifted, Davian suffers the consequences of a war fought – and lost – before he was born. Despised by most beyond the school walls, he and those around him are all but prisoners as they attempt to learn control of the Gift. Worse, as Davian struggles with his lessons, he knows that there is further to fall if he cannot pass his final tests.  But when Davian discovers he has the ability to wield the...

Author interview with Richard Scott Bakker Hi Scott, welcome over to thebookplank and for taking your time to answer these few questions for us! BP: First off, can you tell us a bit more as to who Richard Scott Bakker is, what are your likes/dislikes and hobbies? SB: I’m a white male gen-X-er with a working class, rural background. I dislike greed, pettiness, status judgments, and canned aspiration. I’m a knowledge junkie, especially when it comes to politics, science, and technology. My hobbies are cognitive science and consciousness research. BP: You have been writing for quite a time now when and where did you first decide to pick up the pen and start writing? SB: I’ve always been writing—for as long as I can remember. The funny thing is, I’m a statistics guy as well, and though I had dreamed of being a writer as a child, I set that aspiration aside as soon as I learned the odds against earning enough to survive, and decided to become an academic instead (I-...

Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge by Paul Krueger College grad Bailey Chen has a few demons: no job, no parental support, and a rocky relationship with Zane, the only friend who’s around when she moves back home. But when Zane introduces Bailey to his cadre of monster-fighting bartenders, her demons get a lot more literal. Like, soul-sucking hell-beast literal. Soon, it’s up to Bailey and the ragtag band of magical mixologists to take on whatever—or whoever—is behind the mysterious rash of gruesome deaths in Chicago, and complete the lost recipes of an ancient tome of cocktail lore. Now this book came as a total surprise to me, it wasn't on my radar and to be honest I hadn't heard of Paul Krueger before. I have to thank the lovely people over at Quirk for sending this one over! Broken down the synopsis as follows, demon fighting bartenders, mixology and cocktail lore. What more do you need to get convinced of reading this book? Meet Bailey Chen fresh out of collage and o...

Hope and Red by John Skovron, Empire of  Storms Trilogy #1  In a fracturing empire spread across savage seas, two young people from different cultures find common purpose. A nameless girl is the lone survivor when her village is massacred by biomancers, mystical servants of the emperor. Named after her lost village, Bleak Hope is secretly trained by a master Vinchen warrior as an instrument of vengeance. A boy becomes an orphan on the squalid streets of New Laven and is adopted by one of the most notorious women of the criminal underworld, given the name Red, and trained as a thief and con artist. When a ganglord named Deadface Drem strikes a bargain with the biomancers to consolidate and rule all the slums of New Laven, the worlds of Hope and Red come crashing together, and their unlikely alliance takes them further than either could have dreamed possible.   There are a lot of leading authors in the Epic Fantasy genre, breaking through is a challenge. One thing ...

Dancer's Lament by Ian C. Esslemont, Path to Ascendancy #1 For ages warfare has crippled the continent as minor city states, baronies, and principalities fought in an endless round of hostilities. Only the alliance of the rival Tali and Quon cities could field the resources to mount a hegemony from coast to coast -- and thus become known as Quon Tali. It is a generation since the collapse of this dynasty and regional powers are once more rousing themselves. Into this arena of renewed border wars come two youths to the powerful central city state that is Li Heng.  One is named Dorin, and he comes determined to prove himself the most skilled assassin of his age; he is chasing the other youth -- a Dal Hon mage who has proven himself annoyingly difficult to kill. Li Heng has been guided and warded for centuries by the powerful sorceress known as the "Protectress", and she allows no rivals. She and her cabal of five mage servants were enough to repel the Quon Tali Iron L...

The Tiger and the Wolf by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Echoes of the Fall #1 In the bleak northern crown of the world, war is coming Maniye’s father is the Wolf clan’s chieftain, but she’s an outcast. Her mother was queen of the Tiger and these tribes have been enemies for generations. Maniye also hides a deadly secret. All can shift into their clan’s animal form, but Maniye can take on tiger and wolf shapes. She can’t disown half her soul, so escapes – with the killer Broken Axe in pursuit. Maniye’s father plots to rule the north, and controlling his daughter is crucial to his schemes. However, other tribes also prepare for strife. It’s a season for omens as priests foresee danger, a time of testing and broken laws. Some say a great war is coming, overshadowing even Wolf ambitions. But what spark will set the world ablaze?   Adrian Tchaikovsky, the man behind one of the series that shook and shaped modern fantasy. The Shadows of the Apt series. This will haunt him forever in...

Saint's Blood by Sebastien de Castell, Greatcoats #3 How do you kill a Saint? Falcio, Kest, and Brasti are about to find out, because someone has figured out a way to do it and they've started with a friend. The Dukes were already looking for ways out of their agreement to put Aline on the throne, but with the Saints turning up dead, rumours are spreading that the Gods themselves oppose her ascension. Now churches are looking to protect themselves by bringing back the military orders of religious soldiers, assassins, and (especially) Inquisitors - a move that could turn the country into a theocracy. The only way Falcio can put a stop to it is by finding the murderer. He has only one clue: a terrifying iron mask which makes the Saints vulnerable by driving them mad. But even if he can find the killer, he'll still have to face him in battle. And that may be a duel that no swordsman, no matter how skilled, can hope to win. Two years ago Sebastien de Castell...

Guest Blog: We've all got it coming by Brian Staveley Sophocles and Aeschylus didn’t worry about spoilers. In part, of course, this was because classical Athenians had been too busy tinkering with their triremes to invent Twitter or Facebook, but even if young Themistocles had rushed into the agora immediately following a performance screaming, “Clytemnestra and Aegisthus killed Agamemnon!” his fellow citizens wouldn’t have much cared. They already knew who killed Agamemnon. The drive-by spoiler, a la Harry Potter, was impossible in antiquity. Likewise, if you were an Elizabethan showing up to the Globe to see Richard III , you could be pretty sure that the eponymous character wouldn’t end the play by leaping into his convertible, cranking Dire Straits on the radio, and driving off into the sunset. Richard was always going to die. The question, for those original audiences, was not whether but how .   Modern storytelling, particularly the m...